Question

Does anyone know of a tutorial or detailed instruction set for installing Fat Free CRM? The instructions on github are clearly meant for experienced rails developers not stupid newbies like me.

When I try downloading the source code to my Mac, rails won’t work and I get dozens and dozens of errors when I try to start the server. (There are way too many to even post here) I also tried setting up a new app and painstakingly copying and pasting the files from the source into the new app after it complained numerous times that it could not find the rails server. Now it continues kvetching about syntax errors and dependencies in a dozen or so files and complaining about my gems.

I did properly update the database yaml file and have tried updating my gems and running bundle many, many times but the spaghetti bowl of errors never seems to resolve much. This is the latest Rails 3 version of the app so why would it not work and why does it seem to think that half the gems are deprecated? Other people don’t seem to be getting these types of errors.

I’m clearly missing something that is plainly obvious to the rest of the world and have somehow majorly screwed up the installation. How does the process of downloading a complete app differ from installing a plugin? (I’ve never had this much trouble with plugins.) Does anyone know of an idiot-proof checklist for downloading, installing and setting up this app? After three months of trying to make this work, I am beyond frustrated.

Thanks so much.

Answer 1

The first places to look

1) The Wiki Guide

2) The Readme

Here are the steps I took on Ubuntu, mostly in this order. Remember to try to complete each step without getting errors. If you get errors then it won’t work.

sudo cp -r fatfreecrm/ /var/www (Copy crm to your www root)

sudo apt-get install rails (install rails + ruby + mysql)

cd /var/www/fatfreecrm

cp config/database.mysql.yml config/database.yml (copy mysql config over)

chmod 777 config/database.yml (set write permissions)

vim config/database.yml (set db password, remove /tmp/mysql.sock )

gem install bundler (install bundler)

PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/ ( put bundler on your path, or not ) 

sudo gem install mysql2 -- --with-mysql-dir=/etc/mysql/  (install mysql2)

sudo /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/bundle install (install bundle gems)

rake db:create

rake crm:setup

rake crm:demo:load

rake crm:settings:load

sudo ruby script/rails server

Good luck finding what works for you!